Home truths about home affairs

It's a curious world we live in. Two weeks after Carm Mifsud Bonnici resigned as home affairs minister, various sections of the press still reverberate with analysis, reactions, analysis of the reactions, reactions to the analysis, and so on and so forth.

But in all this analyzing and reacting, nobody seems to have considered the implications of the reshuffle on the endemic problems that plague the same home affairs ministry.

It is almost as though all these same problems also chose to step down along with the responsible minister on Wednesday 30 May; and yet they're all still there, staring us directly in the face.

Starting with that astounding anachronism, whereby the Malta Police Force magically doubles up as both the government's counsel for the prosecution, as well as the official administrators of the Corradino prison... in blatant defiance of all international tried and tested security protocols.

Then there are the various critical reports by the United Nations Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Degrading Treatment, which have tarred the Corradino Correctional Facility with a reputation for consistently disregarding basic human rights... not to mention the endless administrative cock-ups that have translated into millions owed to the police in unpaid overtime (among other logistical and procedural nightmares)... the non-existence of any serious internal investigating body, that is autonomous of the Police Force it is meant to investigate... the refusal (as recently highlighted by the International Council of Jurists) to acknowledge that irregular immigration is a permanent facet of 21st century life, and that a revision of national policy is now required... the list of failures stretches out as far as the eye can see.

And that is but a small sample of the many and various problems that outgoing minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici spent the better part of four years as minister (nine, if you include his stint as parliamentary secretary) doing little or nothing about. And now that his place has been quietly appropriated by the Prime Minister - who incidentally already bears sole political responsibility for the Armed Forces, with the result that one man now wields absolute, undivided power over all the country's security nodes, bar none - it seems the media are still far too preoccupied with the 'unfairness' of poor Mifsud Bonnici's fate, to even ask what's become of any of these unresolved issues in the meantime.

The implications are decidedly uncomfortable, and I have to admit they do not reflect too well on my profession as a whole. It seems that we ('we' being the Maltese media, in this case) are still caught up in this entirely fictitious landscape whereby the only concern that ever drives news reporting and analysis is... how will this affect the outcome of the next election?

Yes, I am afraid it really is that simple. And I have seen this same pattern repeat itself so often now, that I can predict the media fall-out of any given political development with almost perfect precision. Not, mind you, that it's very difficult. After all the exact same pattern of behaviour always comes into play, whenever those who depend on political patronage for their own survival witness their beloved political masters under attack.

The equation that flits through their minds invariably becomes legible in the various articles they tend to write. This is roughly what it sounds like when stripped of all the usual bullshit: "Honest reporting, in this instance, equals political damage to the Nationalist Party. So naturally we will report the matter dishonestly, and hope for the best..."

And so, predictable as a civil war in the middle of the Arab spring, the implications of Mifsud Bonnici's resignation were viewed solely and exclusively from the perspective of how it might affect the Nationalist Party's electoral chances in the coming months. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is almost as though the only thing that has really mattered in all this was whether Franco Debono's antics can be demonstrated to have been personally motivated... and even then, the media coverage promptly spun off into a vortex of utterly irrelevant questions, such as: who comes out worse politically from this entire affair? Did the PN gain any sympathy from the fall-out? Did Joseph Muscat increase or diminish his standing among disaffected Nationalists? Will Debono be allowed to contest the next election on the PN ticket? If so, will he increase or decrease his share of the vote on the fifth district...?

And that, incredibly, is about the extent of the interest shown in this whole affair over the past 15 days. What I would like to know, however, is why nobody bothered asking how the same situation might affect the rest of us lesser mortals out here.

Never mind the Nationalist administration: I'm talking about people who have family members or friends in prison... or who are in prison themselves. Or how about suspects who were arrested in connection with any given crime... only to be presented a 'confession' to sign, at a point when they had no lawyer present to caution them on the possible consequences? Why does nobody ever ask about them? (Nobody, that is, except the European Court of Human Rights, which has so far handed down at least two rulings against this unacceptable state of affairs).

Then there are occasional people who come forward with very serious allegations regarding police abuse of power. For instance, Nicholas Azzopardi, who alleged on his deathbed that he had beaten to a pulp in police custody in 2008, and left for dead... not to mention his family, who have been asking for a meeting with the Prime Minister (who is now home affairs minister, and responsible for the same police at the heart of these allegations) for four whole years, to no avail. 

And besides: what about the police themselves? Why is nobody writing about the fact that their overtime issue was allowed to fester, unaddressed, for the totality of Carm Mifsud Bonnici's tenure of office as home affairs minister?

That's right: the same person who has to date been described almost exclusively in terms of victim - a sacrificial lamb, no less - left in his wake an unpaid and probably unpayable debt running into millions of euros... and the longer we now leave it to settle, the harder it will be to ever come up with the money, in the context of new EU regulations on public spending, etc.

Why has nobody even so much as alluded to any of this in a good two weeks of constantly bashing Franco Debono - and by extension his entire family line, through four generations if not more - while studiously ignoring the undeniable fact that the home affairs portfolio has been in a shocking state of neglect and desrepair for decades?

The bottom line is that these are simply not serious issues as far as Malta's self-styled cream of journalism is concerned. Remember the equation outlined above? It applies here with perfect precision. Honest reporting on the resignation of Carm Mifsud Bonnici would require (at minimum) a public acknowledgement that he left more problems unsolved than he actually found in 2008... and also that he was defended by the same prime minister who has now replaced him, despite his failure to ever deliver on many promises of reform.

How can this possibly translate into anything but bad publicity for the Nationalist administration, as it slowly gears up for a pivotal election?

More to the point, 'honest reporting' would also entail admitting that Gonzi annexed the portfolio to his own Office, not as part of any coherent government strategy to improve the state of Malta's home affairs... but for the simple reason that appointing a new minister would only multiply his existing backbencher problems exponentially... something Gonzi simply can't afford, with a 'one-seat majority' that has a habit of suddenly becoming 'no majority at all'.

This time you can almost project the equation is purely algebraic terms: Appoint Backbencher X as minister... and Backbencher Y instantly announces he will sabotage your government in retaliation, unless he is indulged in his every, unreasonable demand. Appease Backbencher Y with a nice, cushy parliamentary assistant job, in which he gets remunerated handsomely for doing sweet bugger all... and oh look: up pipes Backbencher Z, loudly whining that you are unfairly discriminating between your own MPs to the detriment of 'meritocracy'... and inevitably, the whole cycle begins again.

But all along there has been a much, much more glaring sin of omission among the media... an unasked question of such instant relevance to the matter at hand, that it should have really preceded all other considerations on the trot.

Out of curiosity: how does Gonzi intend to handle this new ministry of his, on top of all the other responsibilities he has slowly acquired through nine years of losing confidence in one Cabinet minister after another? What are his grand plans to address any of the above issues? Will he continue defending the police against all criticism and calls for reform, as his immediate predecessor had always done? Will he do anything at all about the conditions in prison? Will he reform the administration to kept it at an arms' length from the police? Or will he retain a system that places suspected criminals at the total mercy of the police at every stage of the judicial process: from arrest to prosecution to incarceration? 

And how does he intend to solve the overtime problem?

These are among the questions that nobody has bothered asking Lawrence Gonzi in the two weeks since he has officially been substitute home affairs minister. Perhaps we were collectively too busy dismembering Franco Debono's mother, and affixing her dismembered body parts to the battlements.

Or perhaps, after four years with Mifsud Bonnici at the helm, we are so used to nothing being about home affairs at all, that we literally expect nothing less than perpetual continuity of a manifestly failed policy.